Quintin Jardine - Thursday legends

'Dammit, Diddler, you were a bit late there!'

He glowered up from the floor for a second or two, then grasped the outstretched arm and pulled himself to his feet.

'Sorry, Neil,' the sweating man acknowledged, gasping for breath. 'I guess I'm just not as quick as I used to be, only my brain doesn't know it yet.'

'Hmph! From what I've heard you never were as quick as you used to be. Ah, 'scuse me.' Mcllhenney shoved him to one side and lunged towards the yellow football as it flew towards him, trapping it close to the wall of the sports hall, and holding off the recovered Diddler easily, as he looked inside.

'Right, son!' The call came from Andrew John, surging towards goal at a rate just slightly above his normal walking pace. He rolled the ball into the path of the bearded banker, whose side-footed shot beat the token efforts of Mitchell Laidlaw, taking a breather in goal.

The sturdy lawyer restarted the game quickly, throwing the ball out to the halfway line. The hall was big enough to accommodate full-sized tennis and basketball courts although it was rarely used for either of those sports with a raised spectator gallery along one side and two glazed panels set in the other, allowing a view from the Centre's cafeteria.

'Pick him up, Neil,' John called out, as Benny Crossley cut towards the wing. As Mcllhenney sprinted across the court, it occurred to him that his team-mate was at least five yards closer to their opponent, but he let it pass. Benny was no flying winger and was usually predictable, and so he knew that he would turn back on to his right foot for a strike. His block was timed almost perfectly; he won possession as he surged through the tackle, sending the other man spinning, and headed back towards Mitch Laidlaw.

As he moved past the wall panels, he was aware of his son, Spencer watching him, his face almost pressed to the glass.

'Get stuck in, man!' In spite of his exertion, he smiled at the bellow, knowing that it was directed at the unfortunate Crossley, rather than at him. Stewart Rees appointed himself captain of every team in which he played, laying down the law to his colleagues at a volume which rose steadily as the hour progressed; to be fair to him, he did his waning best to set an example. As Rees rushed towards him, Neil played the ball to himself off the wall, avoided his lunge, then set himself to shoot.

For a moment he thought that he had been hit by a car. As Benny Crossley had found a few moments earlier, so the fabric-covered ball seemed to become an immovable object as his right foot slammed against it. His momentum sent him flying forwards, off his feet, twisting instinctively in mid-air to land safely on the hard floor.

There was no apology from Bob Skinner, only the sight, for Mcllhenney, of a retreating back, a long pass being rolled wide of Grant Rock into the path of a grateful Diddler, and an awkward mishit poke which eluded the flapping left hand of David McPhail, the duty goal-keeper.

He picked himself up, moved down, unmarked, to the halfway line and signalled to McPhail to throw the ball out quickly, but just as his team-mate saw his waving gesture, the heavyglazed door to the hall swung open; their equivalent of the referee's whistle. Full-time: the Diddler's goal had been the winner.

Bob Skinner came towards him, smiling, hand outstretched. Edinburgh's Deputy Chief Constable was wearing a Motherwell Football Club replica shirt; he was perspiring, but not as heavily as the others, and his breathing was steady. 'We did you at the end there, fella, did we not?' he chuckled, as Mcllhenney accepted the handshake.

'Maybe, but what a goal to win by. A bloody toe-poke, and sclaffed at that.'

Skinner beamed at him. 'For the Diddler, that was the equivalent of a thirty-yarder into the top corner. All we can do here is our best whatever that might be.'

'Just one, as usual, then I'll need to get the kids home.' Mcllhenney dropped a five-pound note into the kitty jar, a half-pint tumbler which sat on the bar. 'Make it a pint of lime and soda, please, Lesley, and a couple of Cokes for Lauren and Spence.'

'I don't remember ever seeing you have a beer in here,' the bar stewardess ventured as she filled a tumbler from the dispenser. 'Don't you drink at all?'

He shook his head. 'Not any more, other than the odd glass of wine with a meal. That's a luxury I can't afford, not with those two.' He carried the Cokes, and two packets of Cheese and Owen crisps across to a table in a big bay window, where his two children were seated, playing a board game.

'I won't be long,' he said.

Lauren looked up at him; her brown hair was still damp from her swim in the Sports Centre pool. 'No,' she agreed, severely. 'Spence mustn't be up too late.'

He was frowning as he joined his football friends. Bob Skinner had noticed the exchange. 'She giving you a hard time?' he asked; quietly, so that none of the others could overhear.

'Not really. She thinks of herself as a sort of surrogate mother sometimes, that's all.'

'Aye, well. She would, wouldn't she, the poor wee lass. She's cut out for the role though.'

Neil looked up at the ceiling and laughed. 'Indeed she is; but what a teacher she had.' And then the lump was in his throat again. Still, it came without warning; usually when he was alone, but sometimes, in the company of very close friends, people who had known them both. At first it had overwhelmed him; there had been a couple of occasions on which he, big, hard, Detective Sergeant Mcllhenney, had shocked his companions, by dissolving, quietly and without warning, into tears. Now though, he was able to master it, to control the sudden surge of grief before it got to the stage of public embarrassment.

Skinner, having been down that road himself, knew when to say nothing. Eventually his companion dragged his gaze away from the ceiling and looked around the bar of the small North Berwick hotel. The usual Thursday-night banter was picking up pace; the evening's game was being replayed, notably by the Diddler, who was well into the second talk-through of his winning goal.

'Bloody toe-poke!' Mcllhenney grunted.

'Skilfully guided away from the keeper, I'd put it,' the scorer insisted.

'Aye, you would. Now move a couple of your bellies along that bench and give me a bit more space.'

More seat-room materialised for the big policeman; he leaned back and let the chat continue, listening as it widened out, from the Diddler's never-ending store of gossip about the lives of Edinburgh's elite to take in the week's televised sport, which had highlighted the closely fought conclusion of the battle for the English Premiership.

He looked around his new friends, realising again that he, still in his thirties, was the youngest member by several years:

Stewart Rees: as quiet and friendly in the bar as he was loud and hectoring during their game, a chemical engineer and head of production in one of Scotland's smaller breweries.

Andrew John: an assistant general manager with the Bank of Scotland, possessed of a laconic sense of humour, and excellent footballing skills, even if these had been a shade eroded by ageing joints and an expanding waistline.

Benny Crossley: one of four squad members from Gullane, a man of few words, but every one of them weighed and sensible, with the precision of someone who made his living as a builder of quality houses.

Mitchell Laidlaw: managing partner of Edinburgh's biggest legal firm, a legendarily successful litigator of formidable determination, which he brought with him on to the football courts.

Grant Rock: the man about town in this case, North Berwick of the group, local Government official, Rotarian, and like many of the group, a golf addict.